


Letters from Tol Eressëa: Fourth Age

by martial_quill



Series: clearer than clear water [8]
Category: The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Epistolary, F/M, Fluff, Fourth Age, Pining, Separation, Tol Eressëa
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-26
Updated: 2019-03-26
Packaged: 2019-12-18 08:41:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,999
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18246341
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/martial_quill/pseuds/martial_quill
Summary: 16th Coirë,F.A. 3,AvallónëFair lady Goldberry,From Bilbo Baggins, Frodo Baggins, and Maglor, son of Fëanor,Greetings!Nenya,I am playing the scribe for this particular letter. We have all had a few drinks, and apparently the handwriting of Hobbits becomes less than legible, after the third drink or so, even from such noted authors as my companions. No, Bilbo, I will not cross it out! If I am mocking you – and I do not admit that I am doing so – I am only being an Elf. You know how hard-pressed we are to take almost anything seriously!"Or, the one where two letters go to Goldberry. One is from two gentle-Hobbits and a prince. One from a bard who misses his wife.





	Letters from Tol Eressëa: Fourth Age

**Author's Note:**

> Written with nods to prompts from Fëanorion week, even if it was about something else entirely and not really based on any of them, in the end. Prompts included: Elros and Elrond; Kingship; Redemption; Childhood; Music and Songs of Power. I managed childhood and Elrond. I'm counting it as a win. 
> 
> This is currently a standalone. I may rework it to be part of a bigger multi-chapter story, but I wouldn't count on it.

_16th Coirë,_

_F.A. 3,_

_Avallónë_

 

Fair lady Goldberry,

From Bilbo Baggins, Frodo Baggins, and Maglor, son of Fëanor,

Greetings!

 

Nenya,

I am playing the scribe for this particular letter. We have all had a few drinks, and apparently the handwriting of Hobbits becomes less than legible, after the third drink or so, even from such noted authors as my companions. No, Bilbo, I will not cross it out! If I am mocking you – and I do not admit that I am doing so – I am only being an Elf. You know how hard-pressed we are to take almost anything seriously!

Frodo is asking us to get back to the main topic of the letter, that of life in Aman, and how the Hobbits are finding it.

He says: “Fair lady Goldberry! I hope that the Shire is getting along well, and that you have news of it, and Sam and Rosie and their family. And dear old Strider and Queen Arwen. And Farmer Maggot and his family, too!” (I hope so too. I miss Arwen, and Aragorn and Maggot.) “We have settled in Avallónë, on the Lonely Isle; it suits us better than Tirion does, although we’re permitted to go there if we please. Maglor is not living in the city, but he has started a great work, building you a lovely house on the other side of Tol Eressëa, on the edge of the river. It has the most wonderful water garden–

Bilbo: “Though why you want the house to be on stilts is beyond me, my lady!”

Frodo: “–With a great pond filled with golden flowers that shine like fire.” (Frodo’s correct. I’m proud of the lotuses.) Master Elrond is taking very good care of us–“

Bilbo, again: “Fussing over us.”

Frodo: “Well, that too, but I think you’ve earned a little fuss, Bilbo! But Elrond does seem a little bored. In the three years we’ve been on Tol Eressëa, Elrond’s had to deal with a broken leg, and a fracture in someone’s wrist, and that’s about it.”

Bilbo: “Elves are very reluctant to get broken bones, in my experience. I think there were only a few injuries in a decade or so in Rivendell.”

I have pointed out that life as long as Arda does give a certain chance for people to improve their physical coordination. Frodo replies that this did not prevent me from falling into the pond in the water garden when Celegorm shoved me the other day. I have conceded that.

(Before you say anything: It’s fine. Celegorm and I understand each other as well as we likely ever shall.)

Frodo: “Elrond is taking very good care of us, and the scholars of Tol Eressëa have taken up an interest in the history of Hobbits. Everything that you and Maglor said at Arwen’s wedding has intrigued them greatly, and there are now many analyses being produced of the Second Age’s history, maps made of great migrations and journeys of Hobbits, Stoors, Minhiriath Men, and so on. Poor Erestor and your cousin are up to their ears in people asking for the histories. I think Elrond is probably going to get involved as well, eventually, just to have something to do.”

Bilbo: “We met with King Gil-galad! He lives in Tol Eressëa now, and is quite happy there. He asked after you very warmly, and wishes you to know that you are always welcome in his halls in Avallónë. I managed to avoid being horribly tongue-tied when I met him, although it was rather tempting to sing the Fall of Gil-galad to him, or at least just hum it, and see if he recognised it. He pried a lot of details about the Third Age out of us, and was so charming and friendly the whole time. I begin to see why he was such a success as a King!”

Frodo: “Yes, I think I know what you mean. Old Strider is like that too, of course. They have a way of making you feel seen.”

Bilbo: “Oh, yes. I’m not sure if it comes with being a King, or being part of the House of Fingolfin.”

(I am wondering if I should take offence at that, but Fingolfin and his children have always been _very_ good with people. Besides, taking offence seems like a difficult thing to do, when Bilbo is on the edge of falling asleep on his own shoulder.)

Frodo, rather hurriedly: “There are not many Shows on Tol Eressëa like there were in the Shire. There are festivals for the seasons, and they are very wonderful, but there is a sad lack of contests for prize-winning pumpkins and onions. Maglor has urged us to speak with Gil-galad, and believes that the farmers of Tol Eressëa would be delighted at getting to show their vegetables off. But really, Gil-galad surely has a thousand things to do already.” (Ten thousand is more like it, of course, but Gil-galad’s tough, he can deal with one more task!)

I am pointing out that out now, as well as the fact Gil-galad probably regards it as his solemn duty to make sure that Frodo has everything he could possibly want, if it is within his power to organise it.

Frodo: “Well, he did tell us that if we needed or wanted anything, we should only mention it to him. You might be right, Maglor.”

Bilbo: “I can’t help but feel that after all you’ve done, my lad, if you want to introduce a Shire festival to Valinor, then nobody will begrudge it to you. And if there’s one thing we’ve learned about Elves, they always love new things.”

Frodo: “I can’t think of any more news that we have, lady Goldberry. Please give our love to the Queen and Strider, and to any of our friends that you happen to see. If you could get them to write back, it would be wonderful.”

They therefore remain, and I’m using their words, your obedient servants,

Frodo and Bilbo Baggins.

But as for me, I remain simply, ever

Maglor, son of Fëanor.

P.S. Frodo sends his apologies that he has not composed another paean to you and your beauty. As if I haven’t composed a hundred by now. You laughed at most of them!

* * *

_16th Coirë,_

_F.A. 3,_

_Avallónë_

 

Nenya,

What a lot of names you have. Well, I have a few myself, I suppose. I know ‘Goldberry’ is your family’s nickname for you, and it’s certainly a name that Hobbits understand better than ‘Neniel.’ But I have always preferred Nenya, and Neniel, I think I always will. Perhaps it’s because Quenya is the language of my childhood; perhaps it’s just the taste of the word on my tongue. I didn’t mean to give you an epessë, the year we met, but it came into my head one day, during that first autumn, when you brought me home to meet your family. I tried not to think about it. I fell more deeply in love with you by the day, and I thought that if I could just bite back the words and not say a thing, that it would all go away. I was so wrong. I’m glad for that.

I find myself walking back in memory a great deal to that year, even with all the business of building this house for you, and meeting with my legion of brothers, cousins, aunts, uncles, and other assorted kin. That’s even before greeting and meeting with all of my people from the Gap, and old friends from before. That year we met, it was just me, you, and the forest. Well, for the first half of the year, anyway.

Bilbo fell asleep shortly after we finished your letter, and Frodo has wandered off with Maedhros and Elrond to go looking at the stars. But I took another one of the bottles and went upstairs to the study and began to write this. I realized that I had neglected to tell you that I love you and I miss you, in the letter I wrote with the Hobbits.

And I do miss you, Nenya. Morgoth’s stinking breath, I miss you! It’s not as bad as it was during the Invasion, when I thought I would never see you again. But in some ways, well…

No, comparison is pointless. Metaphor might still offer some help to me, perhaps? I miss you like I’d miss a limb, or my sight. It feels as though something quite essential has been torn from me; yet I’m walking around breathing, eating, building and often laughing and living anyway. Horribly paradoxical, that.

I’m overjoyed to have so many of my brothers back among the living. We all went hunting last week, Celegorm, Ambarussa, Caranthir, Maedhros and I. Glasseth and Celebrimbor were not amused, to be left in charge of the House of Fëanor in Tirion in the mean-time – and that was a joy that nearly made me weep. We have high hopes that Curufin, and Atar himself will soon return. But I wish you were here too.

I miss everyone else, too. Our grandchildren, the Maggots, even (sit down before you keep reading) Celeborn of Doriath and his glowers. I can barely believe I just wrote that. I really am drunk. Tell me, does he still growl about what a shame it is that you don’t have better taste in men? I miss it. Well, in the sense that you’d miss wild boar, or man-eating bears, or giant spiders. It’s still an absence, and there are a lot of those these days. I miss you all.

This letter is going to be quite messy, my love. I’m halfway through the second bottle now. Do you remember, that time in the Ered Luin, in the autumn, the first year after we’d admitted how we were feeling? You came a few days after Mithlond’s autumn festival, and you brought two bottles of nanëni. It wasn’t my first time drinking it, but it was my first time drinking that much. That was a good week. We gossiped and laughed and gathered chestnuts, and made love underneath the moonlight on the grass.

I miss that too. I miss making love with you. Angband’s hells, I miss just kissing you. Those nights when you would come into the cottage from fishing, slap your catch down on the bench, and then kiss me? I miss it. The little whimper you made, if I kissed that spot on your neck, and your fingers in my hair, and the feel of your teeth when you nipped at my lips. When I dream about you, it’s far worse than those early years, before you took me as your lover. I didn’t know what I was missing, then. But now I do. So now I dream of you, and I lie on my bed when I wake up without you beside me, missing, longing, wanting. My sole consolation is the idea that you’re feeling the same thing, on the other side of the Sea. Perhaps I shouldn’t wish that on you, but you knew I wasn’t an altruistic man when you married me.

I walk back in memory to all those years in the cottage, to falling asleep nestled against you, with the wind rustling through the trees and rattling against the window-panes. I don’t think there was a more pleasant round of guard duty in all of Arda. I walk back in memory, just to remember waking up and breathing in the smell of your skin, and the way your hair would tickle my neck and my chest. I miss it. I miss that, and I miss the sharpness of your mind, and the kindness of your heart and the sound of your fëa, bubbling like a stream. It feels so strange, after all those years, to go through my days without that stream song in the back of my mind, trickling about my thoughts.

I must be hiding it badly, because my brothers are all a little worried about me. That’s why we all went hunting last week. Ambarussa and Celegorm love the hunt, of course, but Caranthir couldn’t care less. He’s like me, that way. Oh, you know I’ll go along with you, and you know that I’ll be very impressed with all the improbable shots you make successfully, but I don’t love it the way you do. But to hunt with my brothers in Valinor, well, that was a joy I’d often turned up my nose at as a youth, and as your father says, there are enough mistakes in this world to make without repeating them. (How is Nurwë? And your mother, for that matter?)

Carnë was trying to curb his normal sense of humour, and try very hard not to argue with Tyelko. Tyelko wasn’t having it, and kept trying to goad Carnë. It was almost a relief by the time Carnë exploded and they had a good shout at each other. Carnë is joyful to return to life, and be reunited with Malótë and Glasseth, but Tyelko misses Curvo, I think. And even before all of that, Tyelko and Carnë were always like oil and water. Ambarussa are well, and had a wonderful time on the hunt; they shot a winged raptor that I’ll sketch for you when I’m sober. I don’t want to think about what the wine has done to my sense of perspective. Maedhros was a formidable pest, and yes, that word can be applied to an older sibling. I can see you grinning at me now and insisting that that’s the exclusive prerogative of younger children. I beg to differ. He asked me about once every eight hours if I wanted to talk about anything, and the rest of the time, teased me so much that I felt like I was a child again.

Alright, perhaps he was just trying to take my mind off you. You raise an excellent point, nenmírenya.

So I miss you like I’d miss a sense, and yet, I’m also happy here, a good deal of the time. I wake up in the morning, and I hear the birds of Aman singing the songs of my childhood, the wild cackle of the lalaidir, the liquid, chuckling warble of the butcherbird (no, I don't know why it’s called that; we used to make up scary stories to explain why as children) and the cheeping parrots. And I sit in the water-garden that Finrod and Maedhros and I have built, and I enjoy it. The air, humid and warm and wet and so unlike Eriador. Everything green and lush and exploding with life, life running through it the same way grief and mourning ran through the very veins of Middle-Earth.

It all looks different in the light of the Sun and Moon. But not bad. You can see many more colours in Tol Eressëa now, the purple on the pansies as you walk up through the hills towards Elrond’s house, all bobbing and swaying, and lining the way to the apple orchards that his people tend. The apples make a good cider, and they shine a gorgeous, deep pink-red colour in the sunlight, dangling from the trees. I would never have been able to see that detail in the starlight, during the Years of the Trees. Although there weren’t enough people to require orchards to be kept then.

I’ve taken to going for walks on Tol Eressëa with the Hobbits, and with Elrond. It lets the Hobbits gets some exercise, which Elrond says is very important. It also pleases Frodo and Bilbo immensely, allows Elrond to secretly fret over them to his heart’s content, and lets me enjoy looking at the different effect of the light. I hadn’t anticipated the return to Aman to be so pleasant. I thought there would be more recriminations and fury.

So given all of that, I can’t regret our decision, not really. It was the best decision we could make for our family. Elrond had to go. He couldn’t have stayed. I think he would have faded into some shadow of himself. Not even a houseless spirit like Alado, but somebody who simply wasn’t him anymore, and I don’t think either of us could have borne that. We love him too much. And yet, Arwen, Elladan, Elrohir and Aragorn all need someone to keep an eye on them. How are they all? How is Fornost? That’s where you were last, yes?

I hope the twins are adjusting to the lack of a war well enough. They always had so much energy and so much restlessness, even before Celebrían was held captive. Still, again, if anybody can keep them busy until they find a new thing that makes them happy, I’m sure you can do it.

(Worst comes to worst: there’s always playing matchmaker. It’s not as though you don’t have experience playing that particular game!)

My hand has begun to cramp now, and the wine bottle is empty. I’ll say goodbye for now, and then take this down to the beach, and see if I can prevail on your generous aunt to take it back across the Sea to you.

I remain yours–

No, actually, hold on. I’ve told you I miss you, but I also want to say:

I love you. You're so much a part of me that it startles me to remember that you weren't part of my life from the very beginning. I love you. I can’t wait to show you this house that I’m building for us. I love you. I’m terrified of you coming, for what it will mean when you come, and the idea of having to see that grief in your eyes. I love you. I want you back in my life, covering my back, and by my side, so much it aches.

And now that I’ve finally corrected the errors of the previous letter,

I remain ever yours,

Maglor, son of Fëanor

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. ‘Nenya’ can mean either ‘my water’ or simply ‘watery.’ It doesn’t work as an endearment at all in translation, but in my experience, terms of endearment are very particular to the language they exist in. ‘My cabbage’ makes no sense at all, but ‘mon chou’ is still an endearment. 
> 
> 2\. Glasseth in this ‘verse is Caranthir’s daughter, and Malótë is his wife. Their stories are explored in ‘Fair and Free’ and ‘one drop should be enough’, respectively. 
> 
> 3\. The grand-children: Elrond’s children. Which is to say, Aragorn, Arwen, Elladan, Elrohir. Elrond's children call Neniel their 'Daremmá' – Kindi for grandmother – and Maglor their Haru, since that neatly acknowledges the relationships while keeping it separate from Galadriel, Celeborn and Eärendil and Elwing.
> 
> 5\. Cottage referenced throughout the text is the house of Tom Bombadil. Maglor and Goldberry setting up shop there is described in ‘till the world is mended’, which is not quite main universe, but a remix of it. Still, their experiences in setting it up are quite close. 
> 
> 6\. The 'lalaidir' that Maglor refers to is actually a kookaburra. The butcherbird is a real bird, with what I'm convinced is the most gorgeous call in all of existence.
> 
> 7\. Nenmírenya: both a mash-up of ‘Nenya’, watery, and ‘mírenya’, my jewel, a very Noldorin expression of endearment, but also means ‘my jewel of water’ and could possibly count as an oblique Silmaril reference. Make of that what you will.
> 
> 8\. I like to think that ‘mírenya’ was used most during the Years of the Trees, and after the events of the First Age, the use of that endearment declined precipitously. But Maglor is a sentimental romantic and he’s drunk, so that explains it. Come to think of it, that explains this whole idea that seized me today and wouldn't let me rest the whole time. 
> 
> 9\. An explanation, in case it didn't carry through in the text. Elrond's weariness after the Ring War remained the same as in canon, and Goldberry and Maglor had a long, long discussion as to what to do about it. Elrond wanted Maglor to go with him, and Goldberry was not inclined to wish to sail, not yet. What they decided on in the end was a compromise: Maglor would go and keep an eye on Elrond, and Neniel would stay and keep an eye on the youngest generation of the family. Neniel is not going to sail before Elladan and Elrohir do, and the twins, in this version, are not leaving before their sister steps beyond the circles of the world. This is the grief that Maglor is alluding to in his last line.


End file.
